Thursday, July 27, 2006
This from an MOJ reader on my post about James Dwyer's views on the child-state-parent relationship (i.e., parents are merely state licensed care-givers for children):
“I liked your post re Dwyer and the challenge you put out 'So, smart
guy, what's your anthropology?' Love to hear his response. Absent a
thoughtful answer to this question we really can't have a serious
conversation about the rights of children, or anyone else for that
matter.”
Monday, July 24, 2006
A couple of weeks ago, Rick mentioned James Dwyer’s new book, “The Relationship Rights of Children.” He ends his post saying, “notwithstanding my very strong disagreements, I have found Dwyer’s work challenging and instructive.” I have not yet read his new book, but his previous books were challenging and instructive to me because they reveal the logical workings out of a certain strain of liberalism, which I have said elsewhere, is a new form of totalitarianism. In Dwyer’s state as in Castro’s Cuba
We see that this strain of liberalism stands for the freedom to make right choices (according to the dictates of the liberal state). The freedom of those who make wrong choices must be sacrificed at the altar of the liberal state and in the name of freedom. Parental freedom to raise children in a religious home must give way so the state can teach children to act on their sexual feelings unencumbered by the feelings of guilt and shame imposed by unforgiving religious doctrine. Dwyer’s dream for education and child-rearing is working itself out in other areas of American life. The freedom of conscience of doctors and pharmacists must, according to some, be sacrificed so those who desire contraceptives can receive them as easily as possible. The freedom of the Catholic Charities to refuse to cooperate in the contraceptive mentality is sacrificed so that some of its employees can receive contraceptives at lower cost. The list goes on – nurses and abortion, adoption by gay couples and Catholic Charities in Boston
I am interested in learning Dwyer’s views about the nature of the human person – its origins, purpose, and destination. In other words, I would like Dwyer to make his anthropological assumptions explicit. As Meira Levinson says in her book, The Demands of Liberal Education, “one must know to what end(s) one is educating, and these ends cannot be given by the concept of education itself. Thus, education can function as a substantive, directed practice only if it is embedded within broader practice or set of goals.” (p.4). These goals, should, I suppose, correspond to the nature of the human person. I will email Professor Dwyer in the hope that he is willing to comment for us on who are what is being educated when we educate the human person.
MOJ friend and alum John Breen was mentioned in the "While We're At It" section of the August/September issue of First Things for his article, Justice and Jesuit Legal Education: A Critique. Neuhaus writes: "If, as the Society of Jesus has formally resolved, justice is the 'priority of priorities' and understood as being constitutive of the gospel, the fourteen Jesuit law schools in this country have a grave problem. So says John M. Breen, who teaches law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law." Any thoughts on Breen's essay, especially from those who teach at or attended a Jesuit law school?
Thursday, July 13, 2006
In May, William Galston spoke at a Pew Forum on Religion, Moral Values, and the Democratic Party (Hat Tip: MOJ friend Bob Cochran). Among the many things Galston said was this: "there was a significant swing among traditionalist Catholics - 17 points toward Bush - and there was also a large increase in their turnout - 12 percent. In my judgment - and I'm going to come back to this in the penultimate section of my remarks - the real story of the 2004 election was much more about Catholics than it was about Protestants. And I think the real story of American politics in the next 10 years will be written as much around the behavior of Catholics, persuadable Catholics, as it is around the mobilization of traditionalist evangelical Protestants." Galston also discussed the campaign of Virginia governor Kaine as an example of the way Democrats can woo back Catholic voters.
Monday, July 10, 2006
After returning from a week away, I have enjoyed catching up with the recent blog postings. In this post, I want to address Steve Shiffrin's post from a few days ago.
In that post, Steve says: "I am also opposed to government trying to express what it considers to be the religious sentiments of majorities. 'In God We Trust' is a good example of the latter. In expressing the sentiments of the majority, it suggests that Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, and agnostics are not part of the “We” in our political community. Is it part of Christianity not to respect other citizens because of beliefs with which we disagree? And just what has been gained for religion?"
I respectfully disagree with Steve. To my mind, the motto, the "under God" language in the Pledge, and the display of the Ten Commandments are not merely attempts by the government to express what it considers the religious sentiments of the majority. Instead, these symbols reinforce the fact that "our institutions constitutionally presuppose a Supreme Being." (from July 4 posting by Steve). These public symbols are especially important at this time when the presupposition itself is under attack. By saying that we are a nation under God, the majority is in a sense paying its deepest respect to the Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, and agnostic, by recognizing (as the Christian must) that these minorities are created in God's image and likeness, and, therefore, worthy of being treated with dignity despite their minority status.
Michael S.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Thank you Rob for bringing Steve Chapman's (Chicago Tribune) views on rape and pornography to our attention. Chapman seems to suggest that porn equals knowledge and that this knowledge has contributed to a decrease in rape. I'd be tempted to laugh at Chapman's conclusion if the stakes weren't so high. I have no idea whether the growth in the porn market has any correlation, positive or negative, to the incidence of rape.
The destructive effects of the porn industry, however, reach far and wide. Dateline reports, for example, that an estimated 16 million people in the United States suffer from the devastating effects of sexual addiction. The Dateline article recounts the downward spiral of three sex addicts including Mark Lasser, a married minister and counselor, who started down the road to sexual addiction with soft-porn when he was 11 years old. Here in Oklahoma, our newspapers are daily filled with stories of prominent people - ministers, police officers, and ADA's who have lost jobs and/or family because they couldn't resist visiting certain sites on the internet or soliciting a prostitute. An Oklahoma state district judge is currently on trial for what was going on beneath his robe during court sessions. (The judge has denied the allegations). Many sex addicts eventually turn to programs like Sexoholics Anonymous, a twelve step program patterned after AA, for help.
Instead of empowering these 16 million men and woman, America's "changing attitudes about erotica" (Chapman's phrase) helped enslave them by sexual compulsion, leading to a web of lies, deceit, and shame as the addict attempts to lead a double life.
Thursday, June 8, 2006
I thought that this op-ed of mine, which appeared in the Daily Oklahoman on Sunday, May 21, might be of interest to others at MOJ:
By a 6-3 vote, the Oklahoma Supreme Court has established the dangerous precedent of disqualifying judges because of their religious affiliations. Last month, the Court told probate judge, Larry Jones, that he cannot hear the case of Oklahoma Baptist Homes for Children, et. al v. Donald Timberlake because the “circumstances and conditions surround[ing] the litigation” are such “that they might reasonably cast doubt and question” as to Jones’ ability to be impartial or at least they raise “the appearance of possible impropriety.”
What caused Oklahoma’s high court to question Judge Jones’ impartiality? After Timberlake lost his case and while it was on appeal, he discovered that Judge Jones had “received a Doctor of Divinity in 1993 and is a licensed Baptist minister.” Armed with this information, Timberlake asked Judge Jones to remove himself from the case. Jones declined in a five page written opinion pointing out that a) his doctorate was earned at “a non-Baptist affiliated, independent Bible college,” b) that he is licensed by “the Seventh Day Baptist Church of Texarkana, Ark.,” which “is independent and autonomous” and affiliated only with the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, headquartered in Wisconsin,” c) that his church “has neither association with nor fellowship with the Southern Baptist Convention or those churches or members known as “Southern Baptists,” and d) he has never been “affiliated in any manner with Oklahoma Baptist Homes for Children Inc. or Trinity Baptist Church of Oklahoma, Inc.”
Despite the fact that Judge Jones has absolutely NO connection, however remote, to the parties in the case, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ordered him to step aside. As a matter of judicial ethics this is a poor decision because no reasonable person who was informed of these facts would have any basis for doubting the judge’s impartiality. The danger of this opinion, however, strikes much deeper than a run-of-the-mill poorly reasoned judicial ethics opinion.
At its heart, the Oklahoma Court seems to be saying that religious people cannot be trusted to hear and fairly decide cases involving religious entities. At a minimum, the Court seems to be suggesting that a devout Baptist of any stripe cannot sit as a judge where another entity calling itself Baptist is involved. If the United States Supreme Court applied this standard to itself, over half of those Justices would have to disqualify themselves in any case involving the Catholic Church, Catholic Charities, a Catholic Hospital, or a Catholic University.
If the Oklahoma Court fails to reverse course, zealous advocates across the state will begin to probe the religious beliefs, the religious conduct, and the religious affiliations of judges they perceive as unfriendly. Does the Oklahoma Supreme Court really want to open this Pandora’s Box? In the future, will we determine judicial qualifications to hear particular cases by the amount tithed by the judge or whether the judge taught Sunday school or served on a church council or belongs to a church that has certain moral teachings at odds with the litigant?
The Oklahoma Court’s excessively broad view of judicial disqualification in this case looks like an infringement on Judge Jones’ First Amendment right to freedom of religion. Unless the Court is willing to apply this broad standard consistently – disqualifying Rotarians if one of the parties to a case or their close family members are Rotarians, for example – then the Court appears to be imposing an unconstitutional religious test for judges. Hopefully, the Court will see the error of its ways, allowing religious and non-religious judges alike to do their jobs unless there is some reasonable basis for disqualification.
Tuesday, June 6, 2006
The Witherspoon Institute, located in Princeton, New Jersey, recently published a document entitled Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles. Here is the Executive Summary:
"In recent years, marriage has weakened, with serious negative consequences for society as a whole. Four developments are especially troubling: divorce, illegitimacy, cohabitation, and same-sex marriage.
The purpose of this document is to make a substantial new contribution to the public debate over marriage. Too often, the rational case for marriage is not made at all or not made very well. As scholars, we are persuaded that the case for marriage can be made and won at the level of reason. Marriage protects children, men and women, and the common good. The health of marriage is particularly important in a free society, which depends upon citizens to govern their private lives and rear their children responsibly, so as to limit the scope, size, and power of the state. The nation's retreat from marriage has been particularly consequential for our society's most vulnerable communities: minorities and the poor pay a disproportionately heavy price when marriage declines in their communities. Marriage also offers men and women as spouses a good they can have in no other way: a mutual and complete giving of the self. Thus, marriage understood as the enduring union of husband and wife is both a good in itself and also advances the public interest.
We affirm the following ten principles that summarize the value of marriage- a choice that most people want to make, and that society should endorse and support.
This understanding of marriage is not narrowly religious, but the cross-cultural fruit of broad human experience and reflection, and supported by considerable social science evidence. But a marriage culture cannot flourish in a society whose primary institutions-universities, courts, legislatures, religions-not only fail to defend marriage but actually undermine it both conceptually and in practice.
Creating a marriage culture is not the job for government. Families, religious communities, and civic institutions-along with intellectual, moral, religious, and artistic leaders-point the way. But law and public policy will either reinforce and support these goals or undermine them. We call upon our nation's leaders, and our fellow citizens, to support public policies that strengthen marriage as a social institution including:
Families, religious communities, community organizations, and public policymakers must work together towards a great goal: strengthening marriage so that each year more children are raised by their own mother and father in loving, lasting marital unions. The future of the American experiment depends on it. And our children deserve nothing less. "
Monday, May 8, 2006
The article in the NYT Magizine on contraception that Eduardo mentioned is entitled "Contra-Contraception." After remembering Daniel Defoe's 1727 essay "Conjugal Lewdness: or, Matrimonial Whoredom," which was later renamed "A Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of Power of the Marriage Bed," the author, Russell Shorto says: "The wheels of history have a tendency to roll back over the same ground. For the past 33 years — since, as they see it, the wanton era of the 1960's culminated in the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 — American social conservatives have been on an unyielding campaign against abortion. But recently, as the conservative tide has continued to swell, this campaign has taken on a broader scope. Its true beginning point may not be Roe but Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that had the effect of legalizing contraception. ‘We see a direct connection between the practice of contraception and the practice of abortion,’ says Judie Brown, president of the American Life League, an organization that has battled abortion for 27 years but that, like others, now has a larger mission. ‘The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an antichild mind-set,’ she told me. ‘So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome.’”
Shorto asks: “Why is this happening? What's the nature of the opposition to something that has become so basic a part of modern life?”
To me, his answer is the most interesting part of the article – it also points to the relevance of Catholic thought in the public square.
Shorto says: “One starting point is the Catholic Church, and especially Pope John Paul II, whose personal and philosophical magnetism revitalized Catholics around the world, especially the young. A series of reflections the pope gave between 1979 and 1984 on the ‘theology of the body’ — his vision of the integrated physical, mental and spiritual human — has become a whole method of study within the church."
“The pope was a trained philosopher, and the actual text of his addresses on the topic can be dense: ‘Masculinity and femininity — namely, sex — is the original sign of a creative donation and an awareness on the part of man, male-female, of a gift lived in an original way.’ But his words have been unpacked and pored over by theologians and students, and they have shaped a new approach to sex that is, in many ways, old. Kimberly Zenarolla, for one, is applying the theology of the body to the American political sphere. She is the director of strategic development for the National Pro-Life Action Center, a two-year-old organization with 10,000 members that lobbies on abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research and contraception. She's also a single 34-year-old who lives in Washington with, as she put it, ‘a group of young professionals who are living the countercultural message of chastity to its fullest expression.’"
"Zenarolla told me she converted to Catholicism two years ago: ‘I tell people I became Catholic because of the church's teaching on contraception. We are opposed to sex before marriage and contraception within marriage. We believe that the sexual act is meant to be a complete giving of self. Of course its purpose is procreation, but the church also affirms the unitive aspect: it brings a couple together. By using contraception, they are not allowing the fullness of their expression of love. To frustrate the procreative potential ends up harming the relationship.’"
"… As Pope Benedict XVI wrote when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, ‘Contraception and abortion both have their roots in [a] depersonalized and utilitarian view of sexuality and procreation — which in turn is based on a truncated notion of man and his freedom.’”
As the article makes clear, this contra-contraception mentality is not limited to Catholics, with some influential Protestants now seeing the destructive force of a contraceptive mentality.
A couple of years ago, I attempted to draw a link between Griswold, Eisenstadt, Roe, Casey, Lawrence, and Goodrich. Am I out to lunch or am I on to something?
Michael S.
Tuesday, May 2, 2006
Thank your Richard, Michael P, and Eduardo for your discussion on the Church, Condoms and AIDS, here, here, and here. A year ago I blogged on the subject here. I struggled for years to understand and accept Humanae Vitae, but for the past several years I have viewed it as a prophetic encylical. Denver's Archbishop Chaput wrote a beautiful pastoral letter on the 30th anniversary of HV, putting the teachings of HV into more readable language. In short, I fully accept the Church's teaching in HV.
At present, I too, fall on the side of thinking that the Church could, without changing its teaching on human sexuality, approve the use of condoms in the AIDS situation where the subjective purpose of the condom use is to prevent the spread of the disease and not pregnancy prevention. One of the marital goods is the unitive aspect of marriage, which but for the disease would and should include sexual intercourse. Whether the Church should, as a matter of prudential judgment, approve the use of condoms in this situation is a different question altogether and one that I am not competent to answer.
I am interested in hearing from our readers, particularly theologians and philosophers, on the question of whether the Church could, consistent with HV, approve the use of condoms to prevent the spread of disease (in or outside of marriage). I look forward to learning.
Michael S.
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